This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 at 8:05am and is filed under Media and information, Meat, Agriculture, Economics, Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
There is an uplifting story in the UK newspaper The Times about the 20th anniversary of “Send a Cow”. The program sent live, pregnant cows to Africa as a way to alleviate hunger and poverty and foster independence. The author, an inaugural contributor 20 years ago, went to see if allegations that the program was keeping Africa poor, were true or not.
Some unique and key aspects make this program more than just a “throw money at it” charity:
- The cows (and their resulting income) are the property of the women in the family,
we find that if the profit from the milk goes to the woman, it will end up back with the family. With the men, we couldn’t be quite so certain.
- The first calf of each gift-cow must be given to a new family, who in turn must gift the first calf of that cow. In Rwanda, a calf born to a Hutu must be given to a Tutsi family
Still, there have been opponents.
Environmentalists argue that the entire scheme is unsound because not only are bovines poor converters of food, but cows frequently break wind and emit damaging methane. But an independent carbon audit of this entire cow-giving process, gas and all, including the huge amount of fertility returned to the soil, has shown it to be so carbon-friendly that they’re practically in love with it. This, fortunately, spares Send a Cow an embarrassing encounter with the redoubtable Mrs Kibuuka where it says: “Sorry, your six kids will not be going to school after all because your cow farts too much.”
Send a Cow is still an active organization. Also check out another of my favorite charities, Heifer International . [p.s. why not give a cow, sheep or goat as a gift in the name of that hard-to-buy-for person?]
September 10th, 2008 at 10:14am
Am glad you brought this topic up Sara. Another great organization to be able to empower people in developing nations is Kiva.org. It’s a microfinance organization where you can help entrepreneurs in developing nations by helping fund their loans. You can loan as little as $25 and go up from there. Once the borrower pays it back you can withdraw the funds or relend it to someone else.
You can target what type of entrepreneur you wish to help fund, there’s a wide array of business types to assist, ag and farming is included.
Give a man to fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.